Day 42: The Nature of Love and Food

Desire is a bowl of macaroni and cheese. Homemade with sharp cheddar and a buttery crusted topping. But love, love is a spinach salad and three miles on the treadmill.

The first two years of marriage, I was full of desire. We snuggled and napped and were pleasantly inactive together until I woke up one September to realize I was thirty pounds heavier with nothing (like a baby) to show for it. I joined a gym, cut myself off from cheese and learned to eat that nutty dirt-flavored raw spinach. Fifteen months later I've managed to shed forty pounds, and this is not about my weight loss plan, but there's something to be said about the nature of love and food.

I always thought that love would be a continuous plate of comfort food. Lots of flavor and fat and simple carbohydrates. This was a love I wanted, one that would always feel good. One that I could imagine taking shape and bubbling in an oven somewhere. A love that would adjust to me. That would know exactly what I craved and deliver with flavor. What I wanted was desire, maybe passion, perhaps romance. But a diet of romance will pack on the pounds. If there's only passion, the stomach may be satisfied, but it won't be healthy.

I'm learning that love is more like a spinach salad. It doesn't taste as good as I hoped, but it sustains. Sometimes I look at the salad and I want to eat everything else on my plate first. And I have to make a decision to eat each bite. Just like I sometimes make the decision to love my husband when the bubbly feelings are nowhere near. Add to that the perseverance of exercise- and sacrifice- and a healthy marriage begins to take shape.

Don't get me wrong, love- or even a solid marriage- is not about what we look like or how attractive we are. But the nature of love and food are similar in that it's not about what tastes good (or feels good) so much as how this person (this food) adds nutrients and balance into our life.